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Sept. 12, 2013 - Rush Limbaugh Program
37:31
September 12, 2013, Thursday, Hour #2
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And greetings, welcome back.
Great to have you, Rush Limbaugh, serving humanity here behind a golden EIB microphone in the middle of, or actually we're beyond Hump Day now, the fastest week in media.
And I am your host, a charming, harmless, lovable little fuzzboy, well-known radio racantur.
Maha Rushi.
The all-knowing, all-caring, all-sensing, all feeling.
General, all around good guy.
Telephone number here, 800 28282, and the email address Ilrushbow at EIB net.com.
So just to review, what is American exceptionalism?
The core of American exceptionalism is that we are the first country to enshrine in law via our founding documents, that the individual has rights and liberties that cannot be taken away from them, especially by government.
And it is this that has helped us, otherwise ordinary people, to achieve extraordinary things because it has resulted in the removal of shackles that allow everybody in this country, whether they know it or not, it's a shame that too many don't set out on a path to get whatever they want.
It's nothing more complicated than that.
To be whatever they want, to do whatever they want.
Now we understand there's a common morality and framework of law within these behaviors take place.
Don't need to specify it doesn't mean you can do whatever you want outside the law, you know what I'm talking about.
Every normal, sensible person does.
American exceptionalism, America the first country to enshrine in law.
That the individual has rights, liberties, and freedom that cannot be taken away.
Because we are born with them.
They are part of our creation.
They cannot be taken away even by the government.
It's written.
And that's what the Democrat Party objects to and doesn't like.
And it is this primarily that has allowed everybody in this country to do what they want, to get what they want, to be what they want.
Applying themselves to whatever degree they wish.
Today we live in a world where the achievers are suspects.
They're not role models.
The achievers are criminals, they're not role models, and the achievers need to be punished.
Those who are exceptional in their education, their grades.
It's not fair.
It humiliates those who don't do as well.
We must punish.
The greatness of America has always been that those at the bottom, be it in income, be it in education, um, whatever category, had upward mobility, totally rooted in their own ambition and desire.
There was been things holding them back, but it wasn't going to be their government.
The main thing holding most people back is themselves.
But some people have bad parents, and some people have rotten schools, some people it's not perfect.
Upward mobility is frowned on now.
That's not fair because not everybody can do it, and so we shouldn't have anybody be allowed to do it.
That's the prevailing opinion from the White House on down in the Democrat Party on the American left.
And so they seek fairness.
And the way they attempt Their fairness is to equalize everybody with downward mobility.
We take the achievers to whatever degree they achieve and take it away from them.
So that they end up with no more than what anybody else has, so that everybody is equal.
Flawed premise, it's impossible.
With two human beings or two hundred million human beings.
It's an impossible premise, it's an impossible outcome, it's an impossible objective, and it is not worthy.
It's an insult to individuality and humanity to demand that everybody be the same.
But today that's called fairness and compassion, and it's destroying us.
And not teaching them the truth about the founding of this country is taking away the primary tool that every human being in this country has to simply be the best they can be.
Whatever that is.
It's up to you.
Don't be a slacker, be one.
If you want to be an average American, you can do that too.
The American left is not content with you deciding what you want for yourself.
Because you don't have the intelligence or the ability to know what's best for yourself.
You need them.
You need them planning it all for you.
You need them making sure that bad things don't happen to you.
You need them to make sure that no risks are taken.
You need them to protect you, to guide you.
Thing is, they don't care about you anywhere near as much as you do, and they never will.
They can't.
They care about them and what they want.
And what they want is you needing them.
That's the sole source of their power.
And if you don't acquiesce to that, they'll punish you until you give in.
Cave in.
So what the hell with it.
And take your 99 weeks of unemployment.
And feel lucky about it.
But this is not a chauvinistic attitude.
This notion of ordinary people doing extraordinary things, nothing chauvinistic about it.
There's nothing braggadocious about it.
What it is, special.
The founders of this country hoped to be a model for the world.
They knew what they were doing.
This country miraculous.
This country's a miracle.
The intelligence and the foresight, the prescience that our founders had, just incomprehensible to me.
It's almost so miraculous and big, I'm not able to totally conceive it.
But I believe in it.
I've lived it.
And I know millions of others have.
Therefore, I know it's possible.
And I have yet to see...
Obama's recipe work anywhere in the world.
I've yet to see the Democrat Party's recipe work anywhere in the world.
Mao didn't work, Fidel didn't work, Soviet Union didn't work.
Vietnam didn't work.
It just doesn't work.
Not for the people, it doesn't work.
Now it worked for Mao.
He was fine.
He'd kill anybody he wanted.
He could steal anything he wanted.
And he was applauded for doing it, because no, it didn't work for his people.
That's my point.
It didn't work for them, but it worked for him.
It's working for Obama.
He's got Air Force One.
He's got Michelle's got a 757.
Everything's fine for them.
I mean, they're living way beyond their means.
You can't do that.
So basically, folks, the simple way, this is the way I look at it.
I I Throw it out there and you can reject it or what have you.
The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, our founding, were an attempt by the people who founded this country to provide a political framework to facilitate God's creation of human beings that each of us be and remain free.
That's God's will.
We're born that way.
We're born wanting to be free.
Now we're also born dependent.
That's why education and parenting is so important.
We're born dependent.
Nothing we can do about that, but we're born to be free.
We want to break away.
Normal people want their own apartment at age 16.
They want to get away.
They want to, they want to strike out.
Go for it.
And the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are nothing more, all I said, nothing, it's profound.
An attempt by our founders to codify in law, a political framework that acknowledges God's creation.
And right there, you have one of the fundamental roots of the disagreement in this country because there are people that do not want God to have anything to do with anybody or anything in this country.
They want to be God, or they want their tree to be God, or whatever.
And so built-in partisanship from the founding has been part of our existence.
And the ongoing battle has been one of freedom and liberty versus oppression, to one degree or another.
And that's what so many people in this country think we're losing.
We're losing that battle.
liberty and freedom are losing.
And the scary thing is look out and see so many low information people not even aware of it.
Giving it away.
Just letting it be taken from them.
So there are those of us who want to do what we can to change that, stop it, roll it back.
Because there's a better way than what's being tried now.
What's being tried now has never ever worked.
A brief timeout, an obscene profit timeout will come back.
Oh.
No, soundbite.
I want you to grab Audio Sunbite 28.
It doesn't quite dovetail exactly what I've been talking about, but I can make it relate.
It's the commissioner of the National Football League.
And he was on Washington's sports radio station.
And of course, the subject of the Washington Redskins came up.
And his answer typifies how we are proceeding in this country today in ways that infringe upon and limit liberty and show how easy it is to do it.
I'm not dumping on the commissioner.
He just happens to be in a soundbite here today that makes the point.
The point that I have made over and over again.
But I've tried to be persuasive about.
Well, here comes the commissioner making the point.
Let's take a look at Redskins for just a second.
Out of the blue, and it is.
Now, the Redskins, as an offensive name, it's been bubbling up underneath the surface for a number of years.
Never really been taken seriously, but it's been out there because it's one of the ways the left can use to divide people and get what they want.
This year, it has come to life like it has never come to life before.
And automatically, the media, sports media, glommed onto it, and it's now the cause celeb of the National Football League, outside of concussions.
So the commissioner...
was asked a question today.
He said the owner, Dan Snyder, comes out, said he will never change the name of the Redskins.
Is that his decision to make a loan?
Now stop and think of just the question.
He is the owner.
Is it his decision to make a loan?
the sports journalist on the radio.
Isn't Henderson and Nicalon, Can you do something about it?
Because we don't like the fact that he has control of the name of the team.
Is this his decision to make a loan?
Or do you ever foresee a situation, Mr. Commissioner, where the league may have any influence in an issue of that magnitude?
What magnitude?
The Redskins sell out every week.
NFL TV ratings are sky high.
Red skins, paraphernalia, jerseys, replica jerseys and all that stuff.
Licensed merchandise, sells to the roof.
Who is bothered by this?
I'm just you we love to talk about majorities versus minorities.
They can cram nearly a hundred thousand people in that stadium, and every time they have a game, it's full.
Who's offended?
This is common sense.
This is the mayor of Realville stuff here.
This is a manufactured controversy.
Manufactured by the left, and they want the government to come in or a powerful authority to tell this individual owner what he can't or can do.
Unwittingly supporting the loss of liberty and freedom.
No, if if if people have a problem with the name of the team, fine.
Let the NFL deal with it within its own business framework.
Why does the government have to get involved?
Anyway, I want you to hear the commissioner's answer to this question.
I grew up in Washington.
The coach through my team early on, and then I became a Redskins fan.
I know the team name is part of their history and tradition, and that's something that's important to the Redskins fans.
And I think what we have to do, though, is uh we have to listen.
If one person is offended, we have to listen.
If one person is offended, we have to listen.
Let me personalize this.
I wouldn't be on the air if that were the guiding concept.
One person's offended?
We have to listen.
What he means is that uh he's he's buying time here.
He's trying to give these people what they want.
But if one person's offended, out of however many millions of fans that one person realize the power that's being transferred to one person simply because they're offended.
Who isn't offended?
What if I said the term cowboys offends me?
Because of what the Indians did to them and a bunch of Westerns I saw once when I was a kid.
Quick timeout.
Back after this.
Don't go away.
And back to the phones we go.
This is uh this is Tom in Dexter, Michigan.
Hi, Tom, great to have you on the EIB network.
Hello.
Hey Rush, it's good to be with you.
Thank you, sir.
Yeah, in your talk on American exceptionalism, it struck me that the biggest uh ch difference you can see in our exceptionalism versus the rest of the world can be seen in the documents of the Magna Carta and our founding documents.
The Magna Carta, it's interesting you bring that up.
Uh that actually was the first attempt at at limiting the power of a government.
Yeah.
And and uh I had a funny story about that, but I don't Have much time, so I don't want to stop you.
Go ahead.
Well, in the case of the Magna Carter, prior to that, the king had absolute power to do anything that he wanted.
And it was an attempt to rein in.
So it only limited his power a little bit.
He still had great broad powers, but in a few narrow areas, the citizens could act without fear of interference from the king.
Right.
Then on our side, we've completely narrowed the government down to act in a very few small narrow areas, and they are prohibited from doing anything else, giving the citizenry a much wider range of activity.
A complete transformation.
So the rest of the world still operates in sort of a Magna Carta mode.
That's probably where Obama wants to take us to where he's got larger power and we have less.
No question about it.
It's a political zero-sum game.
With liberty and tyranny.
It is.
And it's one of the few areas where a zero-sum game actually applies.
Yes.
Um liberty is what it is, and it's taken away, you lose it.
You don't you go somewhere else in the marketplace to get it, it's gone.
Yeah, you can't make more, can't make lots of it.
It's just a finite supply.
And either I have it or you have it.
But that that is a great point, and that's helpful in in illustration, I think this to people.
Magna Carta uh was in the 1500s.
We uh one of my early trips to London was with some listeners from uh Sacramento when I was on the radio there.
My mom and dad went.
My dad, the only thing he wanted to do was runny mead, where the magna carta had been signed.
And it was on the tour.
That's gonna so the day we go to tour, we drive within five miles of it, and the tour guy says points out the window of the bus, and over there is running meade, and we just kept going.
Didn't stop.
And my dear soa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, what do you mean we just driving by it?
Yeah, I just it's on the tour that there that's where it was.
That's about five miles over there is where the it was stunned because the only reason he wanted to go.
And he got within five miles of it.
He went back on his own the next day.
Hi, how are you?
Welcome back, Rush Limboy having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have.
You remember at the beginning of the program, top of the program, I I shared with you my disgust and outrage uh over being lectured to by Vladimir Putin in the New York Times.
And I didn't get into nearly the whole piece, I just focused on American exceptionalism.
But you want to know what the left's reaction to the Putin column in the New York Times is.
Oh, you gotta hear this.
Yeah, you're gonna you're gonna laugh.
What what do you think the uh left's reaction to Putin's peace is.
Oh no, they're not mad.
They're not mad.
They're saying we had this coming.
And now we know what it's like to live in other countries and be lectured to by the United States.
We had it.
This is the theme running on MSNBC.
We had it coming.
This is what happens when we get too big for the world's bridges, and now we know what it's like to be in other podunk countries being lectured to by so you see, in their view, the United States doesn't liberate people.
The United States doesn't protect and defend freedom around the world.
United States doesn't.
United States is the problem of the world.
We're the oppressors.
We run around and force our way.
We impose freedom on people.
And now we've got a taste of our own medicine, and they're eating it up.
They're loving it.
They don't look at it as a diss of Obama.
On the politics side, they look they think it's deft politics that Obama has moved a very no-win situation off to Putin.
They none of they think Obama's pulled a masterful political stroke here by moving us off to Putin, and then on the other side of it, they're out there out there going yin-ing you feel, hence you feel.
This is what it's like to be in other countries in the U.S. comes around.
This is what it's like to be lectured to by the United States in other parts of the world.
This is I don't know that senior Democrats understand that he's been.
Well, let's go to the audio sound bites.
I think they do.
I think there are pockets of Democrats and media people who understand Obama's been totally played here.
And he has been.
Obama and John Kerry have been toyed with.
I don't think they know it, but I think other Democrats do.
I uh because they have been.
This is embarrassing.
It it for Vladimir Putin to be asserting worldwide moral authority over the United States and our president.
It's just it's unprecedented.
He's doing it with credibility, by the way.
That's what makes it unprecedented.
You had a lot of foreign leaders in the past huff and puff about the U.S., but but Putin.
Putin, this is, I think this is just in the take yourself out of it in any emotional sense, and it's a masterful Putin play.
He took a John Kerry gaffe.
He has made policy out of it.
He now has control of the chemical weapons in Syria.
He's determining how they're going to be inspected or not.
He's determining whether there's going to be a use of force authorization in the United States Congress.
Vladimir Putin is.
Vladimir Putin's in charge of all this, not Barack Obama.
Vladimir Putin has saved Basher Assad's job, maybe his life, and he saved the Assad regime, and he saved Assad's chemical weapons.
And then he lectures the United States for being a bunch of bumbling fools and says, you guys better stop thinking yourselves are special because you're not.
You just run to the mill average.
We can have our way with any time we want.
And meanwhile, Obama's running around thinking how they played Putin, that they sloughed all this off on Putin.
Because what it means is Obama never really wanted to do it in the first place.
He just did this to distract everybody's attention from Obamacare, the defund effort, from the economy.
All Syria was for Obama was a diversion, a way to distract people's attention.
He didn't want to strike.
He didn't want to do anything, just like he didn't want to do anything in Benghazi.
And the left doesn't care about that, snerdly.
They don't care that we didn't the left does not care that four Americans are dead in Benghazi.
They don't care.
What they care about is whether or not Obama ends up harmed or not by it.
And in this case, Obama really didn't want this.
And now they're thinking in the White House that Putin owns it.
And it's his to make or break.
And they think they've made a masterful political move.
It's it's but to answer your question.
Let's go to the audio sound bites.
Last night on PBS and Charlie Rose during a discussion about Obama's evolving policy on Syria.
Two questions about this I'm fascinated by in terms of whether there's a developing idea that the president is not so good at foreign policy, number one.
And number two, whether this whole Syrian crisis will just take more air out of whatever leverage he has for the future of his administration.
I think there's your answer, Mr. Snerdley.
Charlie Rose knows.
But Charlie's known since before the election of 2008 that Obama wasn't.
Well, it's uh if you use the Bay of Pigs for crying out loud, Snurdes in the 1950s.
You think the TMZ crowd into the Bay of Pigs, they're actually thinking it's a it's a livestock farmers and the pigs running.
They don't know what it is.
Um but here's Charlie Rose.
I'm fascinated here, uh developing idea to president, not so good at foreign policy.
And uh whether this whole Syrian crisis will just take more air out of whatever leverage he has for the future of his administration.
And Charlie, by the way, was on CBS this morning, so he survived this.
And he was on TV, he was smiling today, so he apparently is still breathing after having on PBS last night questioned whether or not Obama's any good at foreign Policy.
That reminds me of uh 9-11, Bush, flying around.
He wanted to go back to Washington immediately and the handler said, no, no, no, you're not going there till we get a handle on what happened.
Peter Jennings on World News Tonight on ABC.
Some presidents are just better at this than others.
And what he was talking about, how m wonderful Bill Clinton was in a crisis.
And everybody was lamenting that this didn't happen when Clinton was president, because it's such a great opportunity to be great.
Clinton never had a great opportunity like 9-11.
They're all ticked off that it happened for Bush.
The way they looked at it.
Okay, so here's Charlie.
Developing idea here.
President not so good at foreign policy.
He was talking to John Dickerson, a CBS News political director on his show, and here's what he said.
Some would say it's a complex, ugly world.
And uh this goes back to the red line.
He's not meaning red line.
If we just pay close attention, he's got a sense here, and the complexity of the world is what's the problem, not his talent for handling this.
On the domestic front, Democrats certainly would argue Republicans weren't willing to work with him anyway.
How does this change that dynamic?
I'm not sure it changes it a whole lot because the dynamic was pretty darn bad to begin with.
Okay, so the political director at CBS, John Dennis, it's not Obama's fault.
The world is just too complex.
Wait a minute.
I thought Obama's smartest man in the world.
I thought Obama was capable of anything.
I thought that Obama was the master of the universe, and I thought I'm just remembering what I was told about Obama in 2007 and 2008, that Obama was going to make all this stuff stop.
There wasn't going to be any animosity United States.
There wasn't going to be any more anger at the U.S. There wasn't going to be any more disrespectful attitudes about the United States.
We were going to be loved, adored, respected, all of this kind of stuff.
And now all of a sudden, some Syria, a country that really didn't have any relationship to us in terms of national security.
John Dickerson says, well, you know, it's a complex, ugly world.
Yeah, and it's uh it's uh really complexity of the world is uh what the problem is, Charlie, not Obama's lack of talent for handling it.
Well, let's go back to the archives, grooveyard of forgotten hits.
This is a montage of this Charlie Rose and Tom Brokaw, October 30th of 2008, just before the presidential election in 2008.
Now both of these guys, Charlie Rose, who you just heard say that might mean Obama's not good at foreign policy.
And Brokaw both were on the Obama bandwagon, and they were advocating his election, and they were supporting his election.
They were just short of fundraising and showing up at rallies.
But yet, one week before the election, on Charlie's show, Brokaw and Charlie had this little conversation.
I don't know what Barack Obama's worldview is.
No, I don't know how he really sees where China is.
We don't know a lot about Barack Obama and the universe of his thinking about foreign policy.
I don't really know.
And do we know anything about the people who are advising them?
You know, it's an interesting question.
He is principally known through his autobiography and through very aspirational speeches.
I don't know what books he's read.
What do we know about the heroes of Barack Obama?
There's a lot about him we don't know.
These guys a week before the election, and they're telling us at the same time, well, this is I don't know anything about this guy, whether he was good or not, qualified or not, still got to vote for him because he's black president first one.
First black president, it's why we got to vote for him.
But he may not know what he's doing.
It doesn't matter.
We don't know that.
We don't know who we don't know what he's read, don't know if he knows where China is, what he thinks of China.
Uh don't know his advisors are, don't know anything about him.
But he's great, boy.
He's really the best thing we've ever had happen to us.
Really great, great.
We're doing about him, he's just the best.
Piers Morgan.
Last night on CNN, Piers Morgan, still alive.
He was speaking with Dana Bash, the chief correspondent of Congress for CNN.
And he said, Dana, this is a bit of a mess, isn't it, for President Obama.
Now you have Putin taking over the New York Times op-ed pages to give his latest mission statement to the American people.
It is really remarkable.
Just when you think that the story can't uh change anymore and get any more uh frankly, sometimes weird, it has.
He says that almost boundering on arrogance is the way Putin seems to read this, saying nothing exceptional about it at all, and countries shouldn't be exceptional like that.
Um it's a very strange piece when you read it from start to finish, but you can't help thinking that it what it shows the American people is that the man calling the shots here is not their president, but it's the Russian leader.
That's exactly right.
This answer your question, Mr. Snerdley.
They kind of they kind of get it here in the media enclaves, the media salons and the cloakrooms of the Democrat Party.
Kind of get it here, that that Putin's really running the show.
Have they gonna cover for him?
No, they're just this'll be here and gone by the night tomorrow.
Any big deal.
They're just getting it out there.
I gotta take a break, folks.
Sadly, we must briefly step away, be right back after this.
Okay, we go back to the phones to Michael in Los Angeles.
This is uh great to have you on the program, sir.
Hello.
Hey, thanks a lot.
Um listening to your comments on the Washington Redskins, and a lot of people don't realize how much uh power the the league wheel uh, you know, has um th there was uh uh uh a deal back in the nineties where Jerry Jones tried to strike a deal with Pepsi and the NFL said no, Coke is our official drink, so you you will not serve Pepsi in your stadium.
That's true.
And Jones trying to strike a uniform deal with Nike that year, and they didn't have the license.
No, you're right.
The the league does control certain things that they apply to every team uh in a in a uniform.
They've even got a uniform code.
They've got a uniform guide every game demanding that shirt tails be tucked in at socks at this right height.
I mean, it's it's it is it's really pretty comprehensive control.
You're right.
A team can't even change their uniform without uh appealing to the league and getting permission to wear any other l uniform that the league, like a throwback like the league doesn't want them to.
Well, that's no, that's true too.
If th any uniform change has to be submitted a year or two in advance so that they don't get stuck in stock with a bunch of uh outdated stuff, and it has to be approved.
Even the third jersey, the alternate jersey, which is now black for most teams.
Oh, you're right.
Uh so you you you're thinking here that uh if the league wants to, they will have the ability to pressure Dan Snyder to change the name of his team?
They'll force him to do it.
If there's enough public pressure, if there's if there's enough political correctness, they'll definitely force him to, because that's the way the league is.
They have the heavy hammer.
They'll put the thumb down and say you'll change it.
How would that manifest itself?
Because Snyder doesn't want to do it, so would they mean he really doesn't.
I mean, and and there are not a whole lot of people with the Redskins who do.
It's it's as much a part of the tradition, the NFL is as any other team that's been in the league as long as the Redskins have.
I I just don't think the owners have that much power.
They're they're it's a good old boys' club.
They'll go along with the flow.
That's why Al Davis with the Raiders for years was always the the anthesis of the league.
He he wanted to do things and he abstained ever voted with them, and and uh that's why the league always frowned upon him.
He was the real maverick.
Yeah.
He'd move his team without league permission, move to LA, forced it.
I mean, you know, if it if uh if a player even wants to wear like uh like Otto Graham, you know, number sixty a quarter, he can't do it.
League says no.
Well, you in fact, when Johnny Unitus died, Peyton Manning asked to wear United style hot high top shoes the next game, and the league refused permission.
Yeah, and uh I think uh when Jack Del Rio was coach of Jacksonville, he also wore the suit uh for the first time, uh you know, a suit on the sidelines, and he had to ask permission from the league.
It was turned down.
I think it was Mike Nolan of the 49ers who was refused permission to wear a suit.
Had to wear licensed merchandise.
That kind of power is just it's it's crazy.
It's you know, that that's the kind of stuff.
If I were a league owner and I wanted to wear whatever I wanted to wear, like in the old days, uh the Rams used to wear those old white uh the the blue and white hats and they were all scuffed up.
You'll never see a game where a player will come out with a scuffed hat because they have to have new approved uniforms every week.
Yeah, that's pretty much true.
It's pretty but it remains to be seen uh if uh if a name change I don't you know in this case, what's the league?
Is it Goodell uh alone?
Is it uh an owner's meeting where the owners vote and try to pressure Snyder?
Is it do they get him in a room and say, look, you're killing us, Dan?
Uh the when political correctness, Dan I mean we don't we can't stand for this league to be called racist.
Dan, you gotta help us out here.
Yeah.
And in fact, the last time uh the league tried to do that, Davis uh Al Davis abstained, and and they they lost a big amount of money because the Raiders moved to LA.
Well, um Michael here is uh is right.
He's right.
And I look at when when Goodell says if one person is offended, we have to listen.
He is sending a message to Snyder, the owner of the Redskins.
Quick, Snerdly, in ten seconds.
This name survive or is it gonna get changed?
Redskins survives, according to Snerdley.
It is the fastest three hours in media.
Once again, folks, I've got some Obamacare news that's not good, and they're not gonna distract us, are they?
We don't get diverted here at the EIB network.
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